Minister Kurum announces that DOA has recycled 200 million packages

More than 200 million beverage packages have been collected for recycling in Turkey since the national rollout of the Deposit-Packaging System, known as DOA, on July 1.

Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum said 205,709,303 DOA-labeled PET, aluminum and glass containers had been collected by Sept. 5. The system had reached 3,214,992 registered users.

Antalya led the country with 46,678,972 collected packages. Istanbul followed with 38,675,928, ahead of Izmir with 24,339,288, Adana with 18,723,778 and Ankara with 16,712,516.

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We do not throw them away. We collect and recycle them, contributing both to the environment and the economy.

Kurum said the system would help prevent plastics from entering the environment while supplying recycled raw materials to the economy. Under DOA, people place beverage containers in deposit machines instead of throwing them away and receive a 1-lira incentive for each package.

The system operates under Turkey’s Zero Waste movement and is coordinated by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change through the Turkish Environment Agency. Officials aim to collect 25 billion packages each year and generate a 30 billion-lira contribution to the Turkish economy. Kurum said, “We do not throw them away. We collect and recycle them, contributing both to the environment and the economy.”

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We collected 200 million packages with DOA and sent them for recycling. Awareness of DOA, like Zero Waste, will continue to grow wave by wave.